


It's A Wonderful Life

by ticklishivories



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 10:26:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1465972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticklishivories/pseuds/ticklishivories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You meet him on a hot summer night, when the ground bakes under your feet and the clouds melt out of the sky. He’s warm, too. Warmer than your cold, bony fingers, that ache for a chance to steal him away. But he’s not entirely yours to take. Maybe you've made a terrible mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's A Wonderful Life

**Author's Note:**

> i worked pretty hard on this, but as always, it did not turn out how i had intended. there aren't any warnings other than dirk's occasional insecure thoughts. please enjoy!  
> also, check out dacadaca on tumblr and her amazing art! this is dedicated to her :)

When you meet him, it’s summer, and the air is humid and thick like a muddy pond. The inside of the bar is a refuge to the baking streets outside. As night falls, the air cools like the surface of an oven. People come in with sweat gathered in beads on their foreheads and necks. You know he’s been here a while, because his pits aren’t stained, and he still smells vaguely of cologne. The music is slow and sultry, and chimes with the clinking of ice in little glasses. He’s slouched over a Budweiser as you sit yourself next to him. He doesn’t look up. You can’t make out his features, but his dark hair is thick with gel. It fits somehow with his overly dressy suit and necktie. His skin is caramel, and from where you sit, it smells sweet. You wonder how much of it is acquainted with the summer sun.

It’s when you tease him about his outfit being too hot for the weather that he looks at you. And, like a crushing tide that sweeps you away, like the detached strings of a balloon, your heart swells, burns, and floats away, and you realize that your life is no longer yours.

He’s got the eyes of a deer as you order a Long Island ice tea for him. Eyes- emerald, bright, and curious, that don’t look away from you as the drink is placed in front of him. You smile, and it’s more to ease your own tension than his. It doesn’t seem to work.

“Ease up on the doe eyes. It almost looks like you’re interested.”

He blinks, and looks away. You wonder if you said too much.

“I’m waiting for someone,” he says.

You sit back, and turn your attention towards your own glass. “Oh.”

But then he takes his tea, and tips the drink back as he swallows it down. You watch his Adam’s apple bob. He finishes it in one go.

“But they’re not coming.” He wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and as he turns to lock gazes with you, his cheeks flush a sinful red.

You don’t ever ask him who he was going to meet. He’s tipsy when he speaks; there’s a slur to his voice that entices you because it’s so different. With the alcohol in your system you can’t place if it’s an accent or an impediment. Whatever it is, you firmly agree with yourself that it’s cute. He laughs, and it’s always loud and boisterous. He sways dangerously in his seat to make your blood run cold on purpose. He dances around that edgy boundary between too close and too far. You chase after it, that sweet caramel scent and those crooked teeth behind rosy red lips. You chase after it, all the way out of the bar, onto the hot summer night streets. Into a taxi.

You remember that night in a blur of heat and alcohol. You take him to a hotel, and make sure it’s decent for him. The floors are clean, and the sheets are cool and soft as you fall onto them together. You press yourself on top of him. Kiss the lips you’ve been wanting to taste all evening. The clothes melt away from his skin, as if they were never there, like they were only an idea on his body. It’s hot. The room burns, simmers and boils when his skin touches yours. Your breath is heavy. Sweat gathers on your temple and down your back. Soaks the sheets.

The first time he cries out, his legs and mouth fall open and his back arches off the mattress. It’s a sweet sound that makes goose bumps rise on your arms and neck. You give him a name to call out.

“Dirk, it’s Dirk.”

He pants softly. His arms wrap themselves around your neck and pull you down. Your chests are slick and rub in the best ways. His lips ghost over your cheek and whisper in your ear.

“Jake.”

You grin down at him as your thumb skims over his lips. Jake smiles, his eyes dark and dilated, his face a ruddy hue as you dip down and kiss him raw.

You tangle around Jake entirely. His grip is bruising and his nails scathing, but it makes you feel safe, like there’s no way he’ll let go. His body yields to yours when you press your hands and mouth to it, but he pushes back too, as the pressure between your legs mounts and the blood pulses in your temple like shocks of lightning. At once, you come together, and he sings your name like he’s never felt more wonderful in his life. You finish with the beginning of his name stuttering off your own lips. He gasps yours over and over as he shivers and writhes. You never want to stop watching him.

The world slows to a gentle spin. It’s filled with calm, a precious silence. Breathing slows, skin cools. You lay down beside him. Minutes pass.

It’s late when you feel a stirring next to you. Jake has moved to lie at your side, with his nose pressed against your arm and his breath tickling down your skin. Everything is…still. You feel like the world is yours. You’ve got it in the palm of your hand, on your arm, and if you don’t hold onto it, if you squeeze it too tightly or grasp it too loosely, it will fall away into the cosmos. And you will never hold it again. Subconsciously you pull him closer. He stirs.

“Mm…what time is it,” he asks, and his speech impediment is more prominent with his sleepy slur.

You check the bedside clock. “About 12 a.m.”

He sighs. The bed creaks as he slowly detaches himself from you. You sit up with him, and watch with a dejected feeling in your stomach as he begins to slip his pants on.

You had thought he’d be staying the night. You wanted to talk, maybe go another round, watch some TV, order 2 a.m. room service. But you forgot you picked up a random stranger at a bar. This wasn’t supposed to mean anything. How you felt didn’t matter.

He’s getting dressed in a rush. His hands are shaking a little; he even knocks over the remote when he grabs his keys. You frown.

“There’s someone else, isn’t there.”

He stops. His back faces you.

You’d been thinking it all night. The somber way he sat at the bar, alone, looking at his watch. The way he averted his eyes when you looked at him. It was obvious there was someone else, or that you were the other person. The way he turns back and looks at you like he’s sorry confirms your thoughts.

“There is.” Jake approaches you. He takes one step at a time. You are glaring at a crack in the corner of the wall. The bed dips as he leans his knee on it.

Jake surprises you when he takes your cheek, turns you to meet his eyes, and presses his lips to your forehead. It’s the most intimate kiss you’ve shared all evening.

As he pulls away, he’s ginning sadly, and you can’t imagine why.

He tells you he has a daughter.

The astonishment that you feel is not revealed in your features. He waits for you to think it over, and doesn’t let go of your gaze.

“You’re married, then.”

He shakes his head. Your frown deepens.

“Just tell me, what’s going on-”

“Would you like to meet again? How about for brunch.”

You choke on your shock as he chuckles at you. You want to slap him. You want to kiss him.

“I had an incredible time with you tonight. But I really must go.” Then, he slips away from the bed. Ties his tie around his neck. “She needs me.”

You had a lot of questions. Questions that should have been enough to turn you away. But as he smiles, with a promise of meeting again on his lips and in the piece of paper curled in your hand, you can’t help the flutter of warmth that buds in your chest.

You meet him countless times over seven months. Each time, you learn more about who he is. Jake is horribly afraid of anything to do with heat. He will run in fear if you even tease him about approaching with your straightening iron. Making coffee is your job, and his showers are always an irritatingly lukewarm temperature. Because of this you don’t think your shower sex fantasy will be realized any time soon. He rises early every morning without failing, and goes to bed absurdly early as well. But he can’t eat until a designated time.

“Stomach issues,” he tells you, over a plate of rice and eggs one morning at a Mexican restaurant. He wouldn’t even try your super taco. “It’s fairly easy to upset my diet.”

You don’t question why he’d choose a Mexican restaurant over something safer like an IHOP if he has stomach problems. The man is a paradox, a contradiction. You dedicate yourself to figuring him out.

You learn around the third month that it doesn’t matter to him which way you fornicate, what goes where or who controls whom, but that the preparation is slow. He takes his sweet time when you’re underneath him, drags sounds out of you like he’s playing an instrument instead of a person. You feel like a failure when you return the favor. But he’s happy, curled around you and hugging you close, and it unnerves you how happy that makes you too.

He learns that you love to watch him. So he plays up his act; he moans loudly, he spreads his legs and stretches his body over the sheets like a cat. His skin is so soft and touchable. You wonder if it’s really an act. Maybe he just wants you to touch him more.

The fifth month, you listen to him complain about his job. He’s a tour guide at a zoo. When he first told you about it you made a kind of sputtering/coughing noise in the back of your throat. But he somehow found out you work as a manager at the local fabric store. The back and forth teasing lead to a fistfight that ended with his face buried in the pillows and his ass in the air. From then on he deliberately poked fun to get a rise out of you. And no matter what, he always got what he wanted.

He’s got a firm grip around you. You can’t say no when he says your name so sweetly. Can’t look away when he talks. Categorizing his looks, his silly cowlick, the way he speaks, with the barest touch of a lisp. His laughter. His sadness. You want it all.

He tells you about his daughter.

Little tidbits, pieces that when standing alone you can’t understand. But they collect like antiques in an attic in your head, and gradually you puzzle them together.

Jade is her name. You have guessed she’s around two years old. She likes to draw, and she loves to learn. He spoils her. The collection of stuffed toys in her room is out of control. Jake leaves her at a daycare when he goes to work. The teachers love her. Everyone loves her, he says. A small smile grows on his lips.

“You’d love her, too.”

You hold his hand underneath the sheets. It’s hard, trying to think of something to say. You say nothing.

.

“I think you should meet her.”

You had just finished an in depth discussion about the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not an anomaly that you reply with, “Who, Keira Knightley?”

“No, you ninny. Jade.”

You’re at the cafe where you and Jake have been meeting before you both head to work. They serve decent tea and coffee, and some breakfast foods to talk over. The coffee mug wrapped in your fingers is steaming. It’s good for the chills; the weather has been starting to get colder. He drinks his tea, Lipton, and looks up at you over the lip of it.

“Unfortunately she’s been badgering me about it for quite some time. I can’t get her off my case; it’s as if she already knows you.”

You stare at him. “She knows about me?”

“Well of course she does. You’ve only absorbed half my time that should all be devoted to her. Children get jealous easily.” He smiles. “But instead of anger, she’s dying to know about the mysterious figure that’s taken her father away. I think she’s hoping that…”

Jake’s words fade away. He has your full attention now. You sit with your coffee burning through your skin as you wait. But he doesn’t continue his sentence, and instead shakes his head dismissively.

You continue to drink with a stiffness to your movements that you didn’t have before, and ignore the bundling knot in your stomach.

Jake looks out the window. “We’ll have to schedule it when school is out.”

You frown at your mug. “Sounds good.”

He takes your hand from across the table. It’s warmer than the coffee.

.

You meet him on a cold December morning. Snow floats down like dust to the pavement. You wait for him under the glow of the street light on the curb by the park. You are more layered than a wedding cake, and still you shiver in your slacks (slacks, not jeans). Your nose threatens to drip and your ears and fingers have lost feeling long ago. However you fail to be as miserable as your body. You’ve got that knot in your stomach again, but you can’t see it as anything other than excitement.

He arrives right on time. He’s wearing a green scarf that really brings out his eyes. From a distance, you think he’s grown a foot in height, or he’s wearing a very elaborate top hat. When he gets closer, you see what’s wrapped around his head. His precious cargo sits on his shoulders, looking like a potato sack in a blue dress and a mop of black hair. Jake smiles at you.

You smile at him.

“Is she sleeping?” you murmur.

“No, just watching.” He adjusts her on his shoulders. “She just woke up, and might be a little cranky with hunger.”

You step closer. Trying to get a look at her while you speak to Jake. You can’t see her face under all that hair. It’s quite a few shades darker than his.

“Um, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to a kid.” Your hand twitches in your pockets.

Jake laughs. “You can get closer, Dirk. She’s not a wild animal.”

You listen to him and take another step closer. You nearly start when you see that her eyes are open. They peer through the thick curtain of black hair and stare wide and curious at you.

You freeze, like she caught you guilty at the scene of some crime. Jake turns and asks her lowly, “Come down, darling.”

Jade stirs to life, and in a flash, she is crawling down Jake’s leg like a baby monkey and standing at your feet. Her head is tilted backwards as she stares up at you. There are several seconds of deafening silence, where you flex your fists in your pockets and try to think of something to say. Then, she smiles.

You can’t remember why you didn’t want to see her. What had made you so nervous, so anxious and filled with apprehension? This was Jade, Jake’s daughter, and she was everything like her father. Her soft smile that carried all the feelings she held in her heart at that very moment, and her vulnerable, bright green eyes, lighter compared to Jake’s emerald shade, but contained the same wonder and fascination in them. They were all his. It didn’t matter anymore who the mother was. She was beautiful, tiny, and adorable. And like the first time you saw Jake, you fell in love with her too.

“Hi,” you say, and realize your voice is a little strained. Jake is smiling so wide you’re afraid he’s going to break his face.

“Hi! I’m Jade. What’s your name?” You’re about to answer, but she leans on her tiptoes and whispers loudly, “I already know it’s Dirk, by the way. I’m just being polite.”

The tension in your chest releases, and you laugh. It’s not anything like the quiet chuckles or snickers you give. You clutch your stomach as you hunch forward. It feels nice to laugh like this once in a while.

“Well, then I already knew your name was Jade,” you breathe as the laughter dies away, “and I was just trying to be polite too.” You kneel down on one knee and meet her at eye level. She seems confused. You offer your hand for her to shake. “Nice meeting you.”

She grabs your hand, shakes it enthusiastically, then looks back at Jake. He smiles sheepishly at her.

Jade turns back to you again. You feel a little sheepish under her gaze too. Like she knows too much.

You take your hand away from her little one and grin softly. “You hungry?” Her eyes brighten as she smiles and nods. “There’s an ice cream shop right around the corner. You can get whatever you want. It’s on me.”

She squeaks and runs to Jake, tugging on his pant legs. “Please, oh please can we do the thing that we used to do with mommy?”

His face pales. You see his Adam’s apple bob when he swallows, how he looks out at the street instead of at you. “Um, I’m not so sure, Jade.”

Her eyes glitter and water as she juts out her lower lip. Holy shit, that look could make planes crash and ships sink. He sighs, and picks her up.

“Alright, pumpkin.” Jake beckons you over. You stand awkwardly beside him. The three of you walk through the park, its tall slanting trees covering you from nosy and invasive eyes. It feels very private. “Now, I’m going to pick out something. Anything that I see. And you’re going to name as many animals that you can think of that start with the same letter.”

“I already know how to play, Daddy!” she laughs. Jake winks at you. Your smile returns.

The game goes on until you’re sure you’ve all named every animal in existence. Jade insists that Jake has won by the time you all make it to the ice cream shop. He presses that she won. At once they both declare that you won to break the tie.

“What do I win?”

“Two toppings on your ice cream.” All of you get two toppings anyway.

With the sugar in her system, Jade starts talking. A lot. She yaps on and on about daycare, her friends, her dog (you knew about the dog already. It surprises you how she describes it as not really hers though, but everyone’s). She talks about her mom too. You listen to every word. It doesn’t bother you at all. It’s clear that Jake has moved on from it, from whatever has happened. Jade speaks in terms of past tense. You are sad for her. She’s lost a mother.

But how she looks at you, like she already knows so much about you, how the world is a puzzle she’s figured out long ago, you know that she’s going to spin you like a top, just like her father. Her eyes are always twinkling.

On the walk back, the clouds have cleared, and the snow has stopped falling. The chill does not seep through your bones like it has before. You are able to walk with your hands out of your pockets. Jake holds Jade in his arms. She sleeps with her tiny fists curled in his jacket.

“It’s nice seeing you,” he says. You look at him. His brows are furrowed upward, and his eyes are downcast. You notice wrinkles at the corners that you haven’t seen before. “I’ve been so busy. My new job hasn’t been going as well as I thought, and the Christmas bonus won’t arrive until January.”

He stops walking, and you stop a little ahead of him. He sways back and forth with Jade. He speaks to the ground. “Her mother stopped paying child support months ago. She hasn’t even stopped by to visit Jade.” He sighs. The wind picks up a little. “There are things that I need to straighten out. I’m… not sure when we can meet again.”

Anxiety comes off him like heat waves. You can feel it.

You nod subtly. Lean down, lift his chin, and make him look at you. You burn his image into your mind, engrave it, tattoo his round eyes and thick brows and soft skin into your memory.

“Dirk…?”

You kiss him soundly. His lips are cool and sweet. When you pull away, his cheeks are rosy. His face is pleasantly surprised.

You tuck a stray lock behind his ear and grin. “Let’s go home.”

He nods, in a daze, and lets you slip your hand in his.

.

You didn’t see him again for several months. He kept in touch the best he could. He updated you, even sent you pictures. There were times your mind relented to the darker parts of your consciousness. Thoughts that proved your own insecurities. But you trusted him, and kept every picture of Jade, of himself, and the words he’d smile with as he said them over the phone. You can hear him smile now, and can see it in your head without him there.

During those long days alone, you recall when you walked with them that day through the park. It’s a small moment in your life that you’ll never forget. The three of you together, his warmth by your side and Jade sleeping quietly in his arms. Years later you tell him how much it meant to you. How even then you felt like family. The feeling comes back to you now, on silent nights when there’s nothing but Jake’s hot breath against your skin, or when you wake up together, or when you find Jade cuddled up in the sheets in between you both.

She’s an important part of who you are, just as he is. You don’t think about it anymore. It’s natural, as easy as sleeping, dreaming. You love it. You love it most as you hold his hand while he’s sick, and hold hers when she receives a shot. You love it when you make breakfast for them. When you take her to school. When you kiss the golden band around his finger, and whisper so quietly that not even he can hear.

_‘I love you.’_

He always hears. Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he says it because he wants to.

_‘I love you too.’_

You smile, and ask yourself, what in the world you did to deserve someone so wonderful.


End file.
